farm along spring roads

The pear tree in the front, along a line of fruit trees (several plums, two peaches) bore great fruit this year, unlike the other fruit trees. No plums to speak of and one peach that rotted in the fridge. The other seven or so were probably eaten by squirrels.

I looked through old posts and found none that have shown the disastrous grace of the flood we had on March 12th, the first day of spring break in these parts and as I work for a school, that was the first morning that I had off... and I worked most of it at the farm, probably about 10 times harder than if I'd gone to work!

Here's what happened (email sent):
We've been inundated. Woke at 3:30 because a goat was screaming - a goat we normally don't hear at night. It was raining, but Mike went out to check on it - in his underwear, an umbrella and shoes thrown on. Since he was going, I knew it was safe to go back to sleep. Five minutes later, Mike is on the back deck and sticking his head in the door. "Help. We're underwater!" Up, up up we go until that night. Exhausted both of us.

The barn was under 3 feet of water, which means goats that are not more than a foot and a half high were trying to stay afloat. We got them on top of some hay bales, but barely and Mike had to yank one or two of them when they'd fallen off the edges of them. Remember that their moms are wanting in the stall with the hay in it as well and we let them all in there. The hay was wasted and useless after the flood and so whatever they ate of it now would not be a bad thing.

Mike went to get a rope from the greenhouse, about 40 yards from the house. Not sure if he was thinking clearly, but we were going to try to haul each goat across the flooded, rushing divide between the flooded barn and the side yard to the house which was, thankfully, on higher ground.

When he came back to the barn, I'd already gotten rope from the garage, attached it from a huge tree next to the house, then to one of the heavy wooden fence posts and then tied it off to a beam in the barn. We used this lifeline from the barn to the house to carry, under one arm while we hung on because the entire neighborhoods flooding was going straight through the property on the way to the creek in back.

The water was rushing so fast from uphill that if we'd been caught in it, we most likely would have wound up in the electric fence or drowned. Much like a torrential river. But the lifeline allowed us to carry the smaller goats to the yard, which is above flood level. I pulled one of the nannies, after one escaped and headed to another high point where a stack of rocks had been piled, away from the barn, but not where we needed her. I got the second goat with Mike's help
through the water so that the little ones would have one adult goat (the
rest were in the water in the barn) to control the group. This seemed to
work and now we had the mom controlling the young ones underneath the shed roof where it was drier. Most of the goats either followed or stayed on the hay bales in the barn.

We lost our five turkeys that we were raising for later in the year,
along with 30 cornish cross chickens that died in the flood. The chickens
were roosting and I think all of them survived. It was still dark outside, so
we had to wait until it's light to assess the damage.

Because it wasn't light, we just decided, since goats and people were settled, that we'd sit calmly and read the paper. It was going to be a long day. We had to salvage the stuff in the tack room (most of the feed was spoiled because we'd stacked it on the floor) and the hay we got out of the stall, after giving much of it to the goats. They couldn't go to their stomping grounds and eat because they couldn't get there! The entire front area was flooded and the side was also, leaving us pinned in, essentially.

The sick goat had to be buried as well as the cornish crosses and Mike found the dead turkeys in the stall where they were flooded. We had to go in search of things like feed buckets, stools, anything that floated out of the barn. The whole back wooded area was so misshapen and looked like something out of the Star Wars swamp scene when Luke first meets Yoda.

I cleaned out the tack room a few days later. It was filled with mold and bad feed and stunk to high heaven. It costs us a great deal to replenish the feed and the hay, but eventually, we got through it and now we're more prepared for it. The lifeline from the house to the barn is attached to the midpost, we carry a better flashlight and have hooks for buckets along the barn stall walls. I put in cinderblocks in the tack room so the feed remains above flood level. THe hay in the hay stall is now also up higher and the boards underneath it will support stranded young goats if need be.

We were pretty lucky not to have lost all the young ones. One of the stand-offish goats I took care to sop off after the flood and the rest of the goats were actually a lot tamer, if not very upset over what happened and a bit in shell shock. They were actually good for a little while, not digging into my thighs with their horns to move goats out of the way during feeding time, etc... But now they're the same goats they always were.



--

Later -- one goat that had fallen ill with bad worm problems drowned, but we think she had already died before she drowned. Our casualties were, in fact, numerous enough to have to find a dry place to bury them -- the old pet cemetery was across another point of water that fed into another part of the creek on the other side of the property. The rain went downhill into the 'j' of jiffy lube's symbol, curved around and then headed back to the creek. Luckily, the house was spared. Many neighbors would later tell us that the water hadn't gotten that bad since 26 years before. We just moved in three years ago.

While we were struggling, with a flashlight and whatever house lights we could use to see into the barn area so we could find more animals, we noticed police flashing lights at the top of the property, sending people back the other way. The creek was flooded and anyone heading into it along where it joins with the road and our property would have simply been swept away.

The damage to our fences was almost catastrophic. The entire dogleg fencing went down in a big way, took out long-standing posts in cement and basically has killed that field for the goats since it went down this day. It's now June. We still haven't fixed the fence, but we're well on the way to doing so. Just a few more small events need to happen and we bought the correct fencing this afternoon. SOON!

Corn snakes mating

Last time I talked about hacking back the plants that were fouling the electric fence. Well, Kristi has come down with an increasingly bad case of Poison Ivy. Ouch. She's smearing goop of several different types, anti-itch stuff Calamine lotion. None of it helps yet you have to do something. Two weeks and it should run its course. As of today, one week is done.
The new electric fence works great. To solve the problem of getting power to it I used a long roll of insulated wire and ran it from a section of fence that was working. Of course that fence was on the far side of the gate that the goats need to go through to get to the temporary area. So I would coil the wire up and leave it out of the goats path. Entice all the goats by shaking my feed bucket (this drives them wild) when they were all right up next to the fence, swarming and jumping like sharks in chum, I flung the gate open and ran for the area I wanted them in. All 35 goats stampeded right after me. Once they were in there they quieted down and started eating. I will admit that I sat in there with them for a couple of hours watching them eat, but I had an ulterior motive. This portable fence looks different than any other fence that contains the goats. That means that they are going to test it. Our vegetable garden is only 20 feet away from where they were so there would be some temptation to go eat all those pretty plants. Sure enough, one by one goats would brush up against the fence and get a strong jolt. I snickered at each one. With all the trouble the goats are to maintain, and all the problems they have caused us I get a cruel pleasure watching them get shocked. Billy goat backed into the fence, got zapped and he immediately bolted into the center of the field and was looking around, craning his neck trying to find what creature hurt him. While I was watching at least 10 goats came into contact with the fence with various reactions. Alas I had to cut my fun short as I had to bake a cake.
We are continually coming up with new areas that we can move this fence and have the goats do our mowing for us.
It looks like our chickens are about ready. So this weekend will be the unpleasant and necessary chore of "processing" them. We are slow at getting this done so it will likely take both days to do 30 birds. Then we can clean out the barn stall where these chickens are and that will help reduce the flys.
I had another run in with a corn snake on Wednesday. I had blown my buttercream frosting having overcooked the syrup beyond the softball stage, I was using an old candy thermometer that came from somebody elses house and it didn't read properly. That meant that when I added the hot syrup to the egg yokes the syrup immediately solidified into hard lumps and the eggs were ruined. You'd think we would have a virtually limitless quantitiy of eggs with all our chickens wouldn't you? Well it's extreemely rare that we run out but sometimes they aren't in the house. I went out to get some from the coop and as I reached for the door, I saw a corn snake slithering toward the door. Without thinking i reached out and grabbed it. By this time it had gotten about half way into the coop. Now it's dark outside and I couldn't see the largest part of the snake which was already in the coop. I had grabbed the last third of the creature. The first two thirds was entwined in a wire rack that was originally a hay feeder for the goats and is now used by the roosting chickens to sleep on. I couldn't pull the snake out through the wire and it was struggling to get away. I couldn't turn the light on without letting go and then it would be loose in with the chickens. What to do? I reached down and grabbed my phone, turned it on and speed dialed Kristi in the house. So she came out, turned the light on and I was able to extricate the snake from the wire rack. Kristi pointed out that this snake was smaller than the 2 that we had seen mating the other day. Great so how many do we have here? No wonder Eatz (cat) is always freaked out. This snake was more aggressive than the others have been which basically would patiently wait for me to let them go. This one struck and tried to bite me. I adjusted my grip to right behind it's head and went to release it. I'm sure it's back stealing eggs already.

Next post - chicken processing fun.

Friday we went to TSC for feed. Our Cornish cross meat chickens are getting
very big now. We have 29 left of the original 30 having lost one to a
raccoon. They are ravenous eaters and currently go through a bucket and a
half of feed daily. It's very likely that they will be "done" next weekend
with a finished weight of about 6 lbs. While we were pushing around the
cart loaded with 8-50 lb sacks of chicken and goat feeds I spotted
something we had discussed getting. It is a portable electric fence. It
comes with poles that you stick in the ground and 165 feet of 6 inch square
plastic mesh. The mesh has tiny wire embedded in it which carries the
current. We have many potential uses for a portable fence. One use is we
have many areas that get overgrown with weeds and yet are difficult to mow.
For instance, there is a fence that separates the front yard from the
garden/gourd field. Alond that fence has been left the remains of past
projects, tomato baskets, soaker hoses, T-posts, wire, plastic pipe and
planting pots. If I were to try to mow this area it would foul and possibly
damage my mower. Also if I mowed the area all that vegetation would just be
wasted. With the portable electric fence, we can create an impassable
barrier for the goats which will allow them to graze on the grass and weeds
and prevent them from destroying the gardens. So we buy the fence get it
home and we are anxious to set it up and fill the tummys of the goats. We
unroll the fencing, push the posts into the ground and unroll the netting.
Everyting goes up smoothly. I fastened a long wire from our permanent
electric fence across the driveway to electrify the portable fence. I check
the fence with our fence tester to be sure it's charged. Here is where we
run into one of those little challenges that adds seasoning to rural living.
The fence is dead. Huh, I said. I check the connection. I check to be sure
the new fence isn't grounding out anywhere. Then Kristi checks the
permanent fence along the driveway that we are taking the power from. Dead.
Shoot. That just made this a bigger project. Now we go hunting around the
fenceline for what might be sapping the charge. We trim trees, shrubs and
vines from around half the property. No luck. We found a wire that was
diconnected. We felt joy that the problem was found. Of course it wasn't.
we cleared more brush along the street and finally ran out of energy just
as it was getting dark. We quit for the day vowing to finish it up first
thing in the morning.

It rained the next two days....
___

Friday afternoon the new stove was delivered. We were ready. We had already removed the old stove. I had trimmed the trees down the length of the driveway knowing the truck would have trouble with them. It did. However I should have kept going. The large pecan that the roadrunners nested in last year interfered with the truck and the dead or dying pecan in the barnyard scratched it up too. I helped the driver's helper (making me a driver's helper's helper) and we had everything unloaded lickity split. The helpers was looking around and wanted to know what kind of creature could make SUCH a NOISE. I hadn't heard it but I screen out about 95 percent of the noises there. Just ask Kristi. I'm going to pay for that last if she ever reads this. What he had heard was our peacock. He was in good form at the top of the barn. His call is clearly audible over a mile away which causes me to wonder what our neighbor's think when they don't know what kind of creatures we have. Anyway the stove and associated parts and attachments were all unloaded before the driver even made it out of the truck.
I knew when we got the stove that there was the possibility of a problem with the wiring. Now we replaced the stove with the exact same one. Well exact except for all the differences. So I'm using the word exact incorrectly but that's just the kind of guy I am. Always pushing things. Even the language. Sometimes I push THAT to the breaking point. I am on the record for wanting to replace the old stove with a restaurant style stove with high BTU burners. Six of them. The kind of burners that bring a 10 gallon pot of water to a boil quickly while you stand there in an impatient mood watching. However as usual circumstances butted in and pushed my desires aside. They're always doing that. I wanted the restaurant range which would have required installing a propane tank since we don't have gas. That would have meant digging a trench for the pipe, pouring a pad for the tank a bunch of plumbing and no doubt some pretty extensive modifications to the center island in the kitchen. The circumstances as I've mentioned in a previous bog entry was we were down to one burner that was working unreliably. We needed something quick and something that wouldn't require reworking the whole kitchen to get it to fit. So we got the same thing over again. BUT. There's always a but. Our old stove was 47 inches. The newer version of the old stove is 45 inches. Ha ha ha. That means that there is a 2 inch gap at one end. From a convenience standpoint you can now grab a spatula easier by sticking your hand directly from the top of the island into the drawer without having to open it. I'm guessing this will become another project. I have so little to do and I need things to occupy me. Back to the wiring. We did indeed have a problem. In between when the first stove was made and the second stove was made the code must have changed. We have 3 wires coming from the electrical box and the stove has 4 wires. What to do? I turned as I always do, to the Internet. After about 20 minutes of searching I found an expert site that explained a fix even an electricity impaired person could follow and we had a working stove! Better yet neither of us was electrocuted! We didn't even need the fire extinguisher that I had prepared Kristi with!
Saturday morning we went to a rare treat, breakfast out. So we celebrated the installation of our new stove by not using it. Sigh.
A quick trip to Tractor supply and we loaded down the truck with goat feed, chicken feed (3 kinds) some parts for the tractor and couple of sprinklers. We paid nothing for it this trip because we also returned a "universal tractor seat" fits Ford tractors among others! Of course it didn't fit MY Ford tractor. Not even close. We also stopped at Home Depot. Got some clips to attach the 6x6 goat fencing to our T posts, some BT for worm control and I bought a seat cover for a garden tractor. The seat cover worked better than the new seat and it took only minutes to install. Plus it was cheap!
Sunday was the day that made me achy. We dealt with poultry in the morning. Something had attacked a chicken. The chicken may have been blinded. It's hard to tell, it's head is scarred. It sits upright but we're having to encourage it to drink and we've been unsuccessful getting it to eat anything. Apparently in the same attack a turkey's ear was injured. Likewise the turkey is being a bad patient with no other visible injuries. Sometimes animals are so traumatized in an attack that the just don't recover. We're hoping for the best.
Sunday I set fire to our large burn pile which had branches old wood tree limbs from getting the driveway ready for the stove delivery and cactus. I have found a good technique for ridding ourselves of some of the cactus. Using the tractor's loader I can scrape the cactus out of the ground and then using a pitchfork, toss it into the loader bucket to be dumped onto the burn pile. Now if I can find a couple of months full time, we can be rid of it! I also prepared an extension of the gourd field, scarifying and de-weeding the earth. It's ready for the next wave of gourds! While this was going on I was smoking a brisket. So I'd stop every once in a while and go check the fire, which was always either out or too hot, as usual. But the brisket came out great anyway. It's what I shoot for in cooking. Every time anyone walks past it on the counter, you have to take a taste. If I can achieve that I've done well.

Coming up Monday - Extending the watering system for the new gourd field!

This weekend was busy as always.
We took our sick little kid to the vet. This is the first time we've taken a goat to the vet. In order to "make" (not lose too much) money on the goats we have to do our own veterinary care. We have had successes and failures in that area. We took the kid in because we were second guessing what we were doing. Turns out we were doing okay. The problem was that the kids wormload had gotten too high. We had wormed him twice in the previous eight days, but he was not getting better. When we took the kid in, we could see his poops (please excuse my language. It's the milder form of what I *could* have said) had worms in them. We thought the wormer hadn't worked. The vet did a fecal exam and found there were no worm eggs so the worming had worked after all. The kids system was just pushing out the dying worms that remained. The vet injected the kiddo with anti-biotics and cortisone. He also gave us 3 syringes with more of the same for the next 3 days. We were to keep him isolated with lots of food and water. During the days we'd let the kid out in one of our "goat free zones" the front yard. There are plenty of weeds for him (Alas!) to eat and he wouldn't be knocked down by the other goats. He would crawl around on his front knees with his back legs fully extended. Looked kind of like a caprine wheelbarrow, and eat until he'd fall down. We'd go reset him and he would eat until he fell down. Lather, rinse repeat.
We got our replacement pump working for the sprinklers and watered the gourd field with creek water. There was much rejoicing.
Saturday another portion of the gourd field was readied for planting. Meaning that the topmost surface was scarified to loosen it up and the weeds were scraped off.
We lost a lot of time because of our stove in the morning. We have a 6 burner Jenn-Air stove that has been declining in ability for some time. We were down to one working burner and THAT burner would only work properly on high. After much research we decided that we'd replace it instead of getting it repaired. There were many things wrong with it and if we spent hundreds on it to repair it we'd still have an old stove of dubious value. So we spent some time doing research and it is decided that we'll replace the old stove with a modern version of the same thing. Unfortunately the new stove is 45 inches wide and the old one is 47. So I'll have to get creative with a solution. The new stove should be delivered Friday.
Late Saturday afternoon Kristi came banging excitedly on the locked door from the back yard. I yanked it open and she was squealing about a snake. Well it was two snakes! They were mating under the shed roof. They are corn snakes, both at least 5 feet long. They cared not a bit that we were standing there watching them. After about 15 minutes they left and we didn't see them again. Or so I thought. Sunday night I went out to close the chicken coop, this gets done every night to protect the chickens from predators. As I approached the turkey, guinea pen there was one of our snakes stretched out on the ground before me. It must have been heading for the chicken coop to hunt for eggs. I picked it up and took it back to the house, knocked on the window for Kristi to see it, then I released it on the other side of the house. The fun we have. Corn snakes are beneficial, they can eat rats and mice. Of course they also like eggs but we're willing to sacrifice the few eggs we lose for the rodent control. They also keep the cats stirred up and they can use some agitation from time to time.
We also got some work done on the downed fences. We now have roughly 2/3 of the road frontage fence back up. There are probably about 10 more T-posts to set and then we can figure out how much more 6 x 6 fencing we'll have to buy. Then we can work on the creek side!

Thursday
Kristi beat me home so she already had the animals fed. The cornish chickens were out of water and food. Out of food is normal, out of water is bad. It's getting warmer. Several of our "new" barred rock egg layers are coming online. Not that they have computers (they can only hunt and peck) and a mouse would stand no chance. No, by coming online I mean that they are laying eggs. Tiny little eggs, but eggs never the less. These are chickens that we bought 5 months ago.
Two days ago I witnessed our new rooster doing his job! This is good news as we can start producing our own chicks instead of buying them. Due to predation we loose chickens from time to time. The guineas are fine. We are beginning to be able to distinguish between them by their call. The males have a single syllable song. The females have a two syllable note. Usually it's referred to as sounding like the work "buck-wheat". To me it's just a noise the birds make.

We are having ups and downs with our sick kid. Yesterday it was listless and unhappy. I gave it a pile of fresh oak leaves and that seemed to perk it up a little. Kristi gave it some energy booster and anti-biotic and that helped too.

We went to Tractor supply to take back our pump. We had purchased it to pump water from the creek our property boarders to the gourd field. Well it worked great 3 times and on the fourth time it wouldn't run for more than a couple of minutes. It was still under warranty so we exchanged it for the same one. I'll install it tomorrow. TS had come feed for the first time in a couple of weeks so we bought a few bags. Also got some chicken scratch and game bird feed. The game bird feed for the guineas and turkeys. The cornish crosses also get it because it has a higher percentage of protein. They grow so fast. They are already half way there. I am going to grow them up to a "finished" (know what that means?) weight of about 6lbs. We let them grow to that weight two years ago and it was very nice having the large quantity of meat. This year we have fewer chickens since we lost 50 in the flood. So more meat is better.
Also at TS I bought a new seat for the tractor. The current one is ripped in several places and when it gets rained on the padding is like a sponge. It makes doing tractor work unpleasant driving around with a wet butt. Of course, even though it is made for a Ford tractor the seat's mounting holes don't match up with the tractor's mounting holes. So yep. It's become a project. Should be done tonight.

It had better be done tonight because tomorrow I have to prepare a new planting area. More gourd seeds are going to get planted. Also I'm only half way done cleaning out the barn. There are several cubic yards of "muck" to clean out. I rake out the stalls by hand into the center aisle. Then I'll pick it up with the tractor's loader and take it out to the compost area.

My final task (oh right!) this weekend is to set the "T" posts for the front fence that was destroyed in the March flood. I hope to get the posts set and then I can determine how much fence to buy. I'll use 6x6 square mesh. That's the same fencing we have everywhere else on the perimeter of the property. I'm looking SOOO forward to getting that work done.

Rain is expected again Sunday.

Kristi beat me home today. She fed the animals and saw a kid laying completely down on it's side. That usually means it's dead and we have the unpleasant task of burying a goat. When she grabbed it by its hind legs however it objected to that treatment. This was just as I was arriving home and we went into goat rescue overdrive. It got some energy boosting vitamins, grain pellets-which it ate voluntarily, water, Gatorade and a bunch of leaves and twigs. It was also brought into the house. A very rare event indeed! It ate and drank and we put it in its own stall in the barn.

Tonight we are under a tornado watch. There's a tornado warning under a super cell in Blanco and Gillespe counties about 60 miles to our west. Probably won't amount to anything here, but we still collected anything that was loose and could blow around and put them away. The barn is mostly closed up with just enough room for the goats to get in and out. The turkeys and guineas, well they will have to fend for themselves. We leave their coop open but they prefer to sleep on the ramp leading to a platform at the entrance to their coop rather than staying in the coop itself. Maybe it needs to be cleaned out.

Eight and Momma goat got some more worming medicine since they have swollen jaws. Thought we had given them enough already but they are still having problems. Our one wounded Cornish pullet had somehow gotten out of its stall and gotten into the stall with the rest of its companions. Since the others weren't picking on it we let it stay there. Chickens are bad if there's a woulded bird. They will kill it and eat as much as they can.

Kristi spread the dirt out in the barn that I had dropped there Sunday before the tractor had a flat. So the goats can stay inside in glorious comfort if they wish.

Our little 1/4 acre gourd patch is finally getting results. There are new plants coming up everywhere. A testament to all the work Kristi put in to get it ready. Now we just have to plant the rest of the acre.

Monday 4/30/06

Repaired tractor tire blowout.
Bought the tire at Tractor Supply in Bastrop.
Bought the tube at Tractor Supply in San Marcos. It took 2 trips because I didn't know I needed a tube when I bought the tire. Sigh. Found a good tractor seat that will fit the tractor though!
Went to Discount Tire in Bastrop and they mounted the tire for free. Celebrated at Chili's.
Mounted the wheel and moved a couple of loads of dirt to the barn.
Moved a load of gravel to the driveway.

Global worming update:
Got 19 (she wanted more) she got an apple treat for being sweet.
Snapped some pix of goats attacking a tree. The goats won.

Finished moving the muck from the barn to the compost heap.
Cleaning out the barn once gains us about 2 cubic yards of compost.

Kristi transplanted a bunch of stray gourd plants that were trying to grow uncontrolled.

Our new pump quit working. I took it back to the garage to work on it.

Kristi gathered a bunch of weeds and gave them to the guineas and turkeys. They scarfed them all down. It doesn't take much to keep them happy.

One Cornish Cross pullet got stuck between 2 sheets of plywood. One wing was bloody. She got sprayed with Hydrogen peroxide and was put into her own stall. VERY luxurious for a chicken. We'll keep her there until she's healed so the cannibal chickens don't pick on her.

Eight months

Things go right, things go wrong. The things that stick with me are the things that go wrong. I've had some "challenges" at work this year. There is a lot to that word "challenges" I have had far too little time at home. Partly because of that we have lost several goats. 2 and 3 (the twins) 29 and one of her twins and one of 4's last years twins and she lost one of her own kids. I mean she LOST it. She was out there in the dogleg one late afternoon bellowing for it. Apparently it had gotten under the fence into the creek. The creek is dry this time of year so there was no danger from drowning, but the creekbed is to wildlife what IH-35 is to Texas. A relentless flow of uninterrupted traffic. The first time I went down there I found hundreds of burrows in the banks of the creek. Six inches to more than ten inches across it looked like little round apartments stacked from ground level to above my head in spots. I realized at that time why we lose so many chickens after several days of rain. When the creek gets full all those burrows are underwater. The creatures have to go somewhere and we are the local fast food spot. The Chicken Barn. All you can eat. We have had a challenging chicken year. There's that word again. We've lost maybe a dozen or more chickens to raccoons. Raccoons have a Modus Operandi with regards to chickens. They like to eat the heads first. So it's not terribly uncommon to stroll through the barn and find a chicken laying there peacefully with its head missing. We have had 2 broody hens taken right off their nests. The predator came back and ate the eggs too. All I found of her was a trail of feathers leading off into the woods.
We've lost 4 out of our 5 guineas. Walking through the garden one afternoon I found the head of one laying there in the grass. We bought 5 more pullets (young immature birds) to replace them. They're all gone now too.
We have had eggs eaten by snakes. I've caught a couple in the act this year. One ambitious rat snake had it's lips around our broody pea hen's egg. I grabbed the snake hoping I was right about the species, and carried it off to the creek to be turned loose on the baby raccoon population. Wishful thinking I think. We lost Pure-Cat. He was over 10 years old and kind of withered away. He died in the shed where he usually slept. He was buried along with so many other creatures in our pet cemetery.
Not to linger too long on the specter of dead farm animals, we have had some positive stuff happen too. We just picked up the last two of three full blood Boer goats from a breeder near Elgin. We have a 6 month old buck, a 3 year old Nanny and a 5 month old doe. We now get to set ourselves the task of building an enclosure that will hold a 300lb (eventually) male full of raging hormones. Those goats bring us to about 36. We'll get rid of our current buck (so he doesn't impregnate his daughters) and we can look forward to between 50 and 70 babies this Fall/Winter.

Current list of tasks needing to get done:
Build the Buck pen
Build a fully armed and shielded poultry house.
The spa's pump has sprung a leak and needs repairing.
There are some sections of electric fence that should be extended.
Replace the greenhouse panels with better, more resilient plastic.
Build more shelves for the greenhouse.
Build a new platform for the greenhouse rainwater collection tank (made more difficult due to the 250 gallons of water in it)
Repair the backyard fence, at least the sections that are falling over.
Extend water lines underground to the barnyard. Get rid of the hose that runs from the house.
Fix the electricity to the shed and to the pond.
Bring in rocks and logs for a goat play area. Great for keeping their hooves trimmed short.
Of course the driveway needs maintenance
Some trim pieces need replacing on the house
I still haven't done the home inspector's recommendations from when we bought the place.
Also I need to clean up the area behind the shed again. Maybe put down gravel or mulch to stop the weeds.

I'm building a set of nesting boxes for the chickens. Right now they lay their eggs in several different places. Mostly in the barn in the corners of stalls where they can scratch some hay into a crude nest. They always pick the closed stalls for egg laying. We leave a few stalls closed to the animals all the time to keep some clean. That way if we have a sick animal we don't have to clean one up on a moments notice with a patient waiting patiently. So the hens sit on their little nests and lay their eggs and sometimes fall asleep while laying. Some chickens lay their eggs in the hay feeder in the goat barn. Yesterday as I was checking the fluffiness the hay (goats like fluffy hay) for them I found a broken egg in the midst of the hay. That's not good. Goats are pretty much Vegans and don't even care for eggs fish or dairy products. So eggs are right out as far as they are concerned. The egg reminded me that among the many things I need to do is to make a lid for the hay feeder to keep the chickens out and to keep the goats out. Three times in the last week I've gone to either fluff or refill the hay and I have to check first that there is no goat actually IN the feeder. If I threw an 80lb bale of hay onto a 15lb goat it won't be the hay that suffers. So a lid has become necessary. It will probably be simple, a wood and hardware cloth affair. Easily opened and closed yet suitable for preventing the ingress of the animals while still allowing them to eat all the dried grass they want.
I see that another project has intruded upon the nesting box project. Well isn't that the way it goes. The purpose of the nesting boxes is to encourage the birds to lay their eggs someplace that's easy to get to, for them and for us. Someplace where they won't be disturbed by the myriad of creatures that inhabit the barn. Yet somewhere that is easy for Kristi or me to easily open while balancing a bucketandascoopofchickenscratchandthechickwatererandtheeggcarton which is frequently what we're doing while gathering eggs. So I'm 2/3 of the way through building the nesting boxes. It will be 8 feet long, an 8 holer, with 12x12 luxury boxes for the birds. When I'm done with the structure Kristi will paint the interior in a dark color for privacy. The exterior will be painted for durability. With luck we can keep the goats off it.
All the momma goats are doing fine. All the babies are swell. 29 was released from the designated birthing stall Sunday along with her two babies. We refer to our goats by their ear tag number. That's where the 29 comes from. So we have 3 more expecting females left. One looks big enough for triplets and the other two may have one or two. We're keeping our eyes crossed hoping for trips.

More Catching Up

Brrr... it's been cold.

Last night, Mike smelled smoke -- as in a grassfire type of smoke and drove around at 2:30 in the morning looking for the fire. Luckily, there was no fire.

In his post, he didn't actually make a full accounting of the animals we now have.

23 goats (we had two last night!) -- nine of which, are newborns. 3 of which are male.
47 chickens (last count)
5 guineas (they're brains actually allow them to survive right now. Amazing.)
3 cats (we're keeping PureCat until he becomes socialized a bit more, I think)
1 peacock (wounded)
1 peahen (hopefully pregnant by aforementioned peacock)
1 dog

Catching up

Last post, 15 goats. This post 21 goats. It has been busy. I could attach some very goopy pictures, but that might be rude. Therefore I will post a cute picture of some of the kids. We had a tragedy. When we bought this place Kristi, thinking quickly (as usual) traded a minor potential tax issue at the closing for 3 goats from the previous owners. One young buck (that is a male goat that is still....intact. Fully equipped. Whole. Unaltered. We also got 2 experienced nanny's. A nanny is a female goat that has given birth before. A doe is a female that hasn't given birth and it therefore an unknown quantity as far as birthing problems. Last January we were lucky enough to get twins (both does) and triplets by the other (all boys). Nanny two rejected one and you can read about that in the archives. We called the little buck Spot. In December Nanny two was pregnant again. We were picking the place up and battening down the hatches for a predicted ice storm coming that night. I noticed Nanny two was in the goat barn in the afternoon. That was slightly unusual. She was also bleating, which was unusual. She is usually quiet. We went to the grocery store to buy supplies enough to last a couple of days. When we returned I went to check on Nanny two. I found her in the goat barn. She was having her babies. She had 3. Two were dead, still encased in their placentas. One was alive and kicking. I ripped open the placentas in case there was a chance they were alive but it was too late. If they were born alive, they may have suffocated. It's mama's job to open the placenta, and clean up the babies. Usually they do, but occasionally they don't. Had I been there watching the birth, I could have done something about it, but I didn't put the hints together. While I was cleaning up afterwards I noticed what I thought was the afterbirth coming from Nanny two. It turned out to be a 4th kid, also born dead. This one had been pushed on for a long time, and probably nothing I could have done would have helped. Mama was okay if tired. I got her a nice smorgasboard of grains, hay, alfalfa blocks and goat feed. She ate and drank some warm water laced with molasses. All was well with her. Her baby didn't look so great. One rear leg was twisted about 90 degrees. The other rear leg was bending the wrong way. I think it was due to too many babies in there and overcrowding. I hoped that it would straighten out. After a few days it did and his legs are perfectly healthy. That was Wednesday afternoon.
Thursday we had a nice ice storm. You could leave the house, but it was a struggle to make it 80 feet to the barn. The back deck was iced over. The driveway was iced over. The goats were fed in the barn that day. The goats were happy. I isolated Nanny 2 in the goat barn with her baby so they could bond and she could take care of it without 14 ravenous goats stomping, butting and smashing their way through feeding time.
Saturday morning I went out and fed everybody. When I got to the goat barn Nanny two was dead. She was laying in the same position as the evening before, wrapped around her baby keeping him protected from the cold. THAT was a bad day. Later in the day the other Nanny goat gave birth to twin does. That was great, but the day was one of black gloom.
Saturday morning I buried Nanny 2 in the pet cemetery. She took a big hole. Her baby, now orphaned became my charge and had to be bottle fed. Kristi is calling it Spot, like the first bottle baby. It took a couple of hours to train the kid to drink from the bottle. Kristi and hunger finally convinced it. Oh, and of course we had to drive over to Wal-Mart for a couple of baby bottles. Now, a few weeks later it is taking a quart of baby goat formula twice a day. The baby is perfectly healthy and is much bigger than any of the other new kids.

We are up to about 47 chickens. Our Barred Rock rooster was taken by a raccoon and that was the end of the fertilized eggs for a while. Still, 47 is probably enough. Roughly half are roosters so this spring we'll cull the roosters (make chicken stock) and get another one. We don't want to use one of the roo's we're raising since they are all brothers and sisters. We'll bring in some new genes.

Around the same time as the goats were starting to kid we had a Barred Rock hen go broody. This is our first motherly chicken and is unusual in modern poultry. Broodiness has been bred out of chickens. An egg takes 21 days to hatch on the average. After about 25 days I candled the egg when the hen was out eating. The egg was not fertile and had no chick growing in it. I ran to the house and grabbed an egg from the incubator. I checked it was a good one with a flashlight and ran back to the barn. I exchanged the eggs. Momma hen was fooled and sat right back down on the egg. A few days later the egg hatched and we now have a very proud momma hen strutting around showing off her little baby. This is a behavior we'd like to encourage amongst the chickens.

There's more more more to say and I'll post when I have some more thyme.

Inventory

15 Goats, 1 Buck, 14 Does and Nannys
1 Dog
2 Cats
1 Peahen
1 Peacock
33 chickens (+ one that is fixin to hatch today)
2 Roosters.
55 Animals

All of them need to be fed and watered daily. Dewormed and D.E.'d, petted and fussed over, shooed away and called over. Unstuck from fences, have their bedding cleaned, inspected for pink eye, checked over for parasites, searched for injuries and rarely buried. It's been an enjoyable year with the animals and we're looking forward to what 2006 brings.

The chickens inspect the lathe's new home 

Heavy Metal

Last November Kristi and I drove to California for Thanksgiving Vacation. Vacation should always be capitalized by the way. We had a wonderful trip on the way out. In New Mexico for miles and miles we saw what looked like citrus vines growing on the ground. That didn't make any sense so when we arrived at a little town to buy gas Kristi asked about them. The are a kind of gourd the shopkeeper explained. A local lady gathers them up for crafts sometimes. Well one of Kristi's interests are gourds so we kept an eye peeled for the next hundred miles. Nothing. Not a single gourd or vine. We had exceeded the range of the plants. I volunteered several times to go back and get some but she would have none of it. Too bad.
We had a nice time visiting friends and relatives in California. As part of the deal we picked up a lathe and a milling machine. This was a favor for a friend, they wanted rid of them, it was a nuisance to them and a windfall for me. I had owned a tiny machine shop decades ago so I know my way around the metal working tools. Anyway the trip back was as bad as the trip out was good. I had surgery for a deviated septum (nose) a couple of weeks before and I was still healing. In a small town called Deming New Mexico I was just beginning to pump gas and blood began flooding out of my nose. Not just a little either. We stopped right there and got a motel room. The bleeding didn't stop and I went to emergency - luckily Deming had a hospital. They gave me an IV and stuck a couple of tampons in my nostrils. That was a quick $1100.00. I was dizzy and nauseous so Kristi got to drive most of the way back, towing an 18 foot trailer heavily loaded. One of the few times I drove I very nearly ran us out of gas. We made it to the worlds busiest gas station somewhere in West Texas. Remember it was Thanksgiving week. What an awful trip.
The memory of the trip is now fleeting but the machines are still on the trailer parked out in the yard. I refused to leave them there for a full year. That's just TOO LONG. So this weekend I resolved to move them into the garage. A friend of Kristi's gave us some bookshelves. These were perfect for holding tools and parts and tooling for the machines in the garage so that's where they went. Kristi generously helped organize everything and suddenly we had enough room to move the machines in. Aha! I said. I have vacation coming up. I can move them then! But my vacation is already spent 5 times over with the chores I need to get done. Repair the greenhouse from last years hail storm, Build benches and shelves in there to hold all the plants. Put in a gravel floor and water system both collected rainwater and city water, Reset the supports for the deck so they are not resting on the septic tank lid, build a storage rack for lumber and long items behind the shed, build a proper compost area. That's a partial list. There's more. A lot more. Get the electric fence working around the whole property, Replace some rotting fenceposts in the back yard, clean out the birdhouses, Sand and refinish the deck. There's still more. You get the idea. So we moved them today. I arranged to rent a forklift from my favorite rental company - San Marcos Rent All. It's my favorite forklift as I rent it for work from time to time. I picked it up on its trailer in San Marcos at 8am Saturday morning and towed it home. We moved the lathe first. I thought this would be the easier machine of the two and besides it had to go in first. There were problems that we got to solve and contraptions we got to make but eventully we got the machine set up in its new home. I will attach a picture as evidence.
The mill that I thought would be so difficult was merely tedious. We followed the fine example of the ancient Egyptions, setting the machine down on pipes and I pushed it along while Kristi would take up the pipes as the machine rolled off of them and replace the pipe at the front. This worked well and the machine is now in its new home.
Since this hasn't been much of a farm related post I will share a couple of minor farm items. Early in the day Kristi went chasing after the goats that had once again gotten into the front yard. There was much shouting and waving of arms. The goats left and the trees were saved. But...some have branches broken. All the leaves that were left have been stripped. That's not so good.
I was in the middle of cleanup, putting some lumber away when I heard rain hitting the tin roof above me. I went to get Kristi's golf cart to put it in the garage and Barbecue sat in the passenger side. Well my trip was only going to be a few feet and she had been good all day (mostly) so I gave her a ride around. We went around the fruit trees in the front yard and then into the garden area to survey the damage the frost had done. I rounded a corner past the tomato plants and there was an armadillo! We see the holes they leave as they look for grubs but only rarely do we see the animal. I got Barbecue to look at it and she took right off and chased it out of the yard. Strange creatures they are.

Don't count your chickens after they hatch either

In the last 24 hours we've had 5 chicks hatch. Or flock continues to grow. One of the little ones died between 1:28 and 5:00 this morning. I don't know why. At the earlier time it seemed to be in good conditon. There's one more egg that has pipped- made it's first crack in the shell-so it may hatch before the day is out. We have stopped collecting eggs for the incubator. At the moment we have 31 birds and there are still about 15 eggs left in the incubator. We want to end up with 40 birds and since many eggs in the incubator won't hatch for various reasons. 21 of the chickens have been born in the last month so it will be at least 4 more months before we start getting eggs from them. It's a lot of fun having the chickens around. They also do a fine job of reducing the insect population.

Format change

I don't know if that's the right term but here goes.
I'm not being very regular at updating this blog.
What a surprise.


So.....


I will be posting much more frequently but with even less substance. Even that may be considered substance abuse by some since the quality of the content is unlikely to improve - unless Kristi chooses to post more often.
Any how anything that happens around here of note will be passed on. Especially if something passes on.

Last night Barbecue was barking her ferocious bark in an unusual spot. The far southeast corner of the property. The neighbors back there have dogs and now a horse. We can tell the difference from the sound. Anyway the dog was barking long and loud in the middle of the night. This morning she was listless and didn't run barking out ahead of us as she usually does. Kristi thinks this is for our protection and I choose to believe that too as the alternative is to be annoyed with her. (Barbecue, not Kristi) When I got home this afternoon I checked her and she seems completely fine. So no problem. I warmed up some frozen corn to spoil the various fowl with and crumbled up some saltfree saltines (does that make ANY sense?) for a treat. As usual I called the birds and went to the barnyard tossing corn in every direction. Ever bird we had came squawking. I went into the barn to spoil the small chicks and what do I see? One of the five large chicks (5 weeks old) was in the medium (3 weeks) coop! How did it get in there? No matter. I got it out. Then it hopped up on the rim of the bowl of corn and crackers and greedily pecked away. I picked up the bowl and chick and put it where the other large chicks could get to it.
I commited to rent a forklift for Saturday the 12th at 8:00 am. It's time to move the machine tools that have sat on the trailer in the yard for nearly a year. Last weekend we got the garage cleaned out and we now have room. I have made a graphpaper model of the garage layout with scale sized pieces to represent all the various tools and tables. Now I can have endless fun rearranging the bits until Saturday when the actual moving must be done.

Funeral of a goat

We lost our first goat Friday. It was a mostly Spanish with a little boer mixed in. It slowly began falling behind the rest of the herd when they'd move from field to field, not much but it was always last. After a couple of weeks of being the last goat it quite going with her herd at all. Well this is unherd of. (that was humor) It would stay around the barn and bleat at me when it could see me. It was still eating and drinking, but the other goats would butt it when it would join the them. Our inexperience caught up with us when Kristi noticed that the goats eyelids were white. That's bad and it's a sign of worms. At this point the goat had stopped eating. We ran to the store and got some worming concentrate. I gave her a double dose but it was too late to help. I saw her at about 3:30 when I gave the chickens their afternoon scratch. She was down on the ground with her tongue sticking out and bleating. I tried to help her get some water but she wouldn't take any. I went out again at 7 to close the guinea coop and she was gone. Saturday morning we had a little funeral procession involving a little red wagon, a couple a shovels a golf cart, some gloves and a lot of digging. A goat requires a pretty big hole. It was a sad day around the farm.

Pink eye and dead rabbits

Seasonal businesses and active posting don't seem to go together well. Yesterday I finally posted an entry that was begun in July. That is how things go sometimes. Barbecue is about 10 months old now. Yesterday she caught and killed her first rabbit. Our little girl is growing up. I buried the remains halfway through making dinner.
We had a small epidemic of pink eye go through the herd last month. Our oldest nanny goat got it first. Kristi and I were in the garden field picking tomatos as we did every day from May until August. All the goats went back to the barn leaving Mama goat behind. This NEVER happens. Mama-goat leads the way for all the others. She was bleating and looking around like she was lost. Realizing something was amiss, I walked over to that field. When I got up close, I could see that Mama-goats eyes were swollen and nearly shut! There was also a watery discharge that had wet her face. She could barely see, and I suspect she could only see light and dark or a blur. She had trouble distinguishing the fence the gate etc. I let her smell me for a while to help settle her down and led her out from the field into the front yard. She never gets into the front yard, but I thought this would be easier as it is a straight walk from the field to the barnyard. She ran off and I followed trying to guide her gently to the barnyard gate. I hate to add stress to her when she's nearly blind. I finally got her in there. Then the fun began. I went and bought some eyedrops for pinkeye. Then I went to one of my favorite stores, Tractor Supply Company and bought some hypodermic syringes and some antibiotics. She had to have 3 injections over 6 days. It did clear up the pinkeye though. 4 more goats got it over the next few weeks and they all had to be isolated from the herd and injected. Not many of them enjoyed it. In fact, none of them enjoyed it. They are still suspicious of me months later.

Guineas are wonderful birds. They are watchdogs (watchbirds?) that squalk so loudly you have to hold your hands over your ears. They squalk at strangers, hawks, sounds, feathers, dirt, the sky and minor air movements. Get the picture? We started with 7 guineas. We lost one early on when I failed to realize the quickness of their development. They could fly before I was ready for them to fly. My little, portable chicken coop was pressed into service when we got the guineas. They took to it well as they had no choice. The coop was designed for chickens which don't generally fly very well. I had left the top 4 inches below the roof open for ventalation. One day I went out to feed them and they were all sitting on the top roost! So they were able to fly over 2 feet to the 2x2 roosts. Gah! I had to do something quick. I went and cut some impromptu screens out of hardware cloth. This was screwed over the openings. They still had plenty of ventilation but could no longer escape. A quick count however showed one missing. We looked around but it was gone, probably eaten by a possum, raccoon or cat.
Last weekend I put the guineas away just at dark. They are the last stragglers amoung the poultry to go to bed. A count showed 5 birds, six if you count the rooster but that's another story which I will come to presently. Since it was dark it was hard to see. I ran and got Miss Lyn and together we tried to find our missing bird. No luck. We trusted we would find her/him in the light of the next day, and sure enough we did. Miss Lyn was searching all those places that the chickens lay their eggs every day. One of the newer places is behind a small door in the goat barn. This door is about 4 feet wide but only 2 feet high. The door is always kept open, folded back against the inside wall of the building. The door is held in place by a cinderblock. Frequently the goats move the block around and the door comes away from the wall enough for a chicken to get behind it for the privacy she wants for egg laying. When Miss Lyn opened the door she found our missing guinea. It had gone in and could not get out and had died. As it was raining heavily I opted to bury the poor bird in the afternoon.
Several weeks ago our main rooster "Florshiem" was found dead on the floor of the barn. There were no marks on him and no reason could be found for his death. He was buried on the perimeter of the barnyard where he lived his whole life. This loss left us without a main rooster. We still have an emergency backup rooster, but as it is a ridiculous bird we won't acknowledge it. We needed a rooster. A mate for our flock of 9 Barred Rock hens. The hens lay eggs just fine without a Roo, but if we want to create new Barred Rock chickens we need a rooster for fertilization. We found a place that sells more or less full grown roos and bought one for $7.00 An exorbinant price for such a bird. However the benefits may outweigh the drawbacks if we get more chicks.
We let the roo go in the barnyard. Silly us, we should have locked it in the chicken (guinea) coop for 2 weeks so it would know where home was. I only read about that after the rooster disappeared. Yep, after the first night it was gone. After 3 days we were going to go get another one. I was in the barn with the box that we had picked the last one up in, when in the corner of the barn scratching around was our rooster!! It hadn't been eaten! The barred rock hens would pick on it mercilessly. Whenever the roo was anywhere nearby the hens would chase it off. Later that afternoon I saw the rooster go into the guinea coop, look around an come out again. That evening as I was shepherding the guineas into the coop I saw the rooster in there. So the roo was going to live with the guineas. Swell. Forget about fertilized Barred Rock chickens then. Turns out that the roo wasn't developed quite as much as we thought. He still had a few weeks to go before he started crowing. Now he hangs out with the chickens during the day and the guineas at night. We are happy with a full incubator, he is happy and the barred rock hens are happy that they have a guardian.

You say Tomato, I say Potato.

It's the 26th of June and hotter than three kinds of hell, but that doesn't stop us from working our collective asses off. I'm not talking donkeys here, either.

The 200+ tomato plants are ripening, but not all at once. We get about 10 pounds a day and yesterday we made tomato sauce with the first ten lbs. Today, we have another ten pounds and will be making salsa, but not for canning. I also canned several pints of crunchy jalapenos, the same jalapenos that make you get on your knees and scream to the heavens. You know, good ones.

The rat in the tack room is maybe five inches long plus the tail. Mike's seen it three times now, always in the morning, but he can also hear it most of the time. We left the door ajar for Eatz, our rat-eating cat, but today the little goats got their heads inside and thus their bodies and tore open a chicken feed bag and messed up some of the goat chow bags.

Our attempt at raising corn this first go around was a bust. Without big machines that go between the rows and pick the corn, we figured out that we need at least two feet between the rows to get into it with a mower. Mike thinks I'm crazy because I bought a hand mower, one that doesn't run on gas. It will come in handy. He just can't see it right now.

Alas, the corn looks like miniature corn, and really that's not bad, it just isn't the type of corn we wanted. It's silver queen, but matured too fast because of two factors -- weeds and lack of nitrogen in the soil. This is version One Point Oh!

The watermelons are coming along nicely, too, but slowly, as always. The squash -- two kinds -- zucchini (sp?) as well as round squash, are growing like crazy. The plants are the biggest I've ever seen. Huge.

The gourds are doing well, but I could not remember what type of gourd I planted in one pot and when I transferred them, I thought they were dipper gourds, but that's not the case. They're LOOFAHS! So we have round ball gourds, dippers and loofahs this year. Somewhere. Next year, the markers will be bigger so I can find them.

Today, I harvested the dill seeds on the drying heads that will die off in the sun if they're not captured. I put them in a garbage bag with holes in it, then tied it up in the kitchen.

The volunteer gourds in the barnyard that are doing well are birdhouse gourds. We also have snake gourds growing.

Mike finished the covering behind the shed where he will store his wood, so that's good. Today, he is sorting the wood and creating a way to store it properly. He's found a bunch of cockroaches which are easily taken care of organically with boric acid and diatomaceous earth. It's too bad the chickens don't follow him around out there, because they love to eat the cockroaches. More protein, better eggs.

We are getting between six and seven eggs a day right now, but some of the shells are not hard enough and I suspect that those eggs are from the new layers. We've always had that problem with the ends of the eggs being super soft and usually broken. Mike says that's not the case, that the chickens scratch around and cause the egg to break. Nonetheless, those eggs get thrown into the barnyard and our little cannibals love them.

The guineas are a handful, but they hang out in a pack, are quite noisy and delightful at the same time. They explore a little more area every day, and these last few days, that area has been the barn itself.

Weed control for the tomatoes, the potatoes, the beans, the corn, etc... is a real issue we have to deal with next time. The black plastic could have worked, but the dirt I put on top seems to have allowed the grass and weeds to grow. Version One Point Oh!

The fruit trees we ignored for a week and the leaves fell of off some of them because of the heat and the fact that we've been too busy to keep watering them consistently.

Bewicks Wrens, which are diminishing in numbers in the US, seem to be nesting in the small, wire shelf just outside the back door. The eggs, we think, have hatched because the wrens come with grasshoppers and other bugs, so that can only mean they're feeding chicks. The wrens are wary of us, but more wary of our long-hair cat (Thud), and chirp like the dickens when she's around. There are four little eggs and both the male and the female share nesting duties.

We foiled the squirrels that had torn a hole in the trashcan that we were using to store bird feed on the back porch. We replaced it with a metal one, but recently, we've discovered that the little buggers have pissed all over the lid. Maybe they're just pissed off because they can't get to the seed. With all the pecans, the acorns and other food around, you'd think they wouldn't be so spoiled.

Barbecue, who has been given the OKAY to chase the squirrels has a little dance that she does when chasing them. She runs after them with a bounce on her front paws, barking excitedly and turning around and around. We encourage her to do this and she loves it. It still doesn't keep the squirrels out of the back yard, though.

Barbecue is enervated by the heat. Poor dog, she sits under bushes where it's exposed and cool dirt. I don't think she's got enough energy to actually dig a nice cool spot out for herself under our trees at this time. That's not a bad thing.

We tried to set up a scarecrow waterer that is motion-activated, but she'll have none of that. She is afraid of the water because someone, AHEM, used to squirt her if she started barking at the hose. Now she stays away from the water when it's in, AHEM, someone's hands.

Welp, it's time to go switch the waters over and eat lunch.

Humidity Blues

Now that the heat's here, so is, yes, the humidity. It blankets every act you commit outside and every single step you take. Mike can just THINK about going outside and his shirt is soaked.

The guineas flew the coop yesterday. Mike cooked dinner and I went outside to check to see if the guineas had come out -- we've left the cage open for the third day and they finally decided it was cooler outside than inside the cage. But they weren't just walking around, they were bathing in the dirt. It reminded me of Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein and Teri Garr's "Roll, roll, roll in the hay.." scene. Only four guineas made the jump, with two squawkers inside the coop who didn't quite understand the concept of an open door.

We saw Star Wars III for the second time yesterday and came home around 6:30 when Mike decided to check the trap for predators. He thought something was amiss because Barbecue was barking like crazy and acting a little weird. She knew there was something trapped, but didn't quite find the English words to tell us, "Hey, Dudes, something's in the trap." Stupid dog.

So off Mike went and Barbecue apparently got to the trap before he did... and then Mike saw that another raccoon had visited us over the last two days, taking the chicken-parts bait that we left in the trap.

We did the humane thing again, using the truck's exhaust and a garbage bag to do the deed...

It was kind of a crazy night, but very delightful and funny in other ways.

The tomatoes are getting out of hand, but they're not quite ripe just yet. I pickled a batch of jalapenos (two pint-sized mason jars) and put some in a bowl for us to try them out. They are spicy hot, but only after the first bite. But then you get down-on-your-knees-say-jalapeno-luya-scream-like-you-mean-it hot. It's the sandy soil what does it, methinks.

Off to never-never land...

Kristi

It's still Summer... or it's Summer-still

It is amazing to me how comforting this farm is, how wonderful to go home and to not have to worry about walking around the house in skivvies or staying inside because you don't want to talk to the neighbors. It all works for us. We like the peace and quiet because truly, neither of us have quiet jobs. Mike's job might be on the top of a hill that overlooks a cow pasture, but it's still noisy with the people around the warehouse, his employees and the constant ringing of the phones. My job is just crazy.

It is SO nice to come home to the farm. It's just RIGHT here.

Our harvests so far have been some test garlic and onions, a few plums, peaches, herbs, eggs, 40 'harvested' chickens, dill up to my... neck (almost). The gourds have gone crazy and will be taking over the 50 foot by 150 foot plot of land where they're planted.

The tomatoes are going crazy, too, and the teardrop tomatoes look more like filled in cartoon balloons with large... points on the ends.

The corn has just begun to put out its pollen packages and I hope we see some silk action in the next few weeks.

One of the boar billy goats have, for the last two days, been in the forested area where there is no gate. It has cried when we got home and gotten stuck behind the fence where it goes to find better foliage, I guess. We've had to let it out twice at the evening feeding time. The poor thing bleats like there's no tomorrow and is so panicky with us, that it just doesn't know how to handle getting back into the barnyard.

Our barred rock chickens are almost ready to lay, and we think one of them might be doing so. We can't ever tell because we pick up the eggs at odd times. Since chickens lay about every 23 hours (with regular feedings), we don't know and can't FIND the eggs when they do lay them. They've laid in the nesting boxes I made for them only twice. They are foragers, too, supplemented with chicken scratch from time to time and laying mash when they want it in a huge feeder.

The littlest goat is finally off formula, but still a pain, as it is the loudest of the goats and the one that has to be right next to us around feeding time. Bleating. Did I mention the annoying bleating?

It's hot, now, and there is still much work to do. The greenhouse is useless right now, but still has a few plants in it. Tomatoes (cherry) as well as castor bean trees, one caper plant and a few odds and ends. I need to clean it out and reorg it for the fall. It's not quite right, yet.

We have sparrows nesting right outside our back door, right at eye level and where we put stuff like gloves. There are three eggs in the nest along with Mike's matchstick lighter for his barbecue.

Speaking of Barbecue, she's got a million sticker burs in her coat and we try to keep her free of them by brushing once or twice a week, but it just doesn't seem to matter. Rolling around in the dirt and the grass is her specialty, after all.

It's been a long few weeks.

Happy farming!

Miss Lyn (Kristi)

Heat? What heat?

Sweat was stinging my eyes as I walked away from the grave. Gravedigging. Just another chore that has to be taken care of on the farm. Judge, jury and executioners too are jobs needing to be done. The raccoon had been trapped sometime in the night out in the far back woods along the creek behind the house. We find holes dug under the fence every time we venture out there. Even after we plug up the holes with whatever is at hand, usually fallen branches and limbs from the hundreds of trees all around us, the nocturnal marauders pull them out or push them aside and canvass our property. Raccoons are fierce, smart and bold predators. We have lost chickens in broad daylight when we are home on the weekends. We have lost a rooster (not a big loss) and one of our 10 Barred Rock hens. This is a loss screaming for vengence. The barred rocks aren't even mature yet. We've had them for nearly 5 months we expect them to start laying any day now. Adding to the raccoons crimes, I was bitten by a tick after walking out to check the trap. We baited the trap with part of a chicken back. These and other parts are kept in the freezer for the next time we make stock. Even a small piece is enough to attrack the greedy killers. Saturday we went to check the trap and found the hissing snarling beast. Now we have a problem we have to get rid of it. After discussing options we come up with 3 methods. One is to release it. We could drive out to an area far from any houses and near a creek so the raccoon would have shot at survival, and release it. This is unfortunately illegal and it might create a pest problem for someone else. So that one was dismissed. Option 2 was to shoot it. We have a rifle now, but haven't used it and I have only fired BB guns and the little .22 rifles at carnivals. So I really need some practise before I go after the varmint with guns blazing. So I chose to use carbon monoxide. We put the trap into a large trash can on its side and then taped a plastic trash bag to the opening, sealing it. Next I cut a small hole in the closed end of the bag. The hole was taped to some cardboard that was wrapped around some aluminum foil that covered the end of the exhaust pipe of my truck. The truck was started, in 20 minutes the deed was done. The creature was probably dead in 10 minutes but we wanted to be SURE. It was late in the day Saturday so we waited until Sunday to bury it.

Same song, different day

This past weekend, my friend Mary visited us, wanting to have 'farm therapy' which is to say a day of getting away from all the world you inhabit. We planted jalapenos and tabasco peppers, about 20 plants. This is added to the nearly 200 plants, now -- most of which are tomatoes.

Our Guineas are getting bigger and made their presence known when they could fly up to the top of the coop and see out. Unfortunately, they could fly out if they wanted to, so Mike worked on putting hardware cloth up so they could see out -- but not fly out.

The composting isn't fast enough for what I'm using these days and so I think I'm going to have to start a new pile and let this one be. Maybe get some compost from the forested areas on the farm for a while.

We captured a raccoon in the live trap, one that seems like it's a baby, which can only mean there must be a larger one, the one that killed two of our chickens. Mary went with us to, well, dispose of it, although she prefers this more humane method than the one we first thought we would do --which is to shoot it. We've lost one of the barred rock hens and one of the roosters -- the pretty aurecana with black feathers that had really nice, dark green highlights in them. The rooster's feathers were in a field opposite of where the remaining body parts of it were. Very odd because the rooster was quite a large one. The raccoon had to have been large enough to haul it almost a tenth of a mile.

We caught a possum a few days ago and set it free by one of the creek entryways at the back of the property. It probably won't come back, seeing as it was pretty well pissed off with us for merely capturing it.

Barbecue now knows another few commands -- 'roll over' and 'shake' although she does the 'shake' part whenever she wants to impress us -- without us asking her to. She is getting bigger and more like a dog every week.

Mike busted his balls this weekend. We also bought a new lawnmower. The one we had was from my father's house (after he passed away) and we've already spent enough money on it -- 45 dollars the first time and we got it running the second time -- well, almost. Mike broke the cord on it when he tried to start it. Not sure if it was that he doesn't know his own strength or that the cord was just worn out. Either way, more money would have been spent on the dang thing just to get it back to running condition. Never buy Murray products...

We purchased a Honda, a higher-end model for 500.00 and some change. It works really well and although it surprised us by being self-propelled (a feature Mike scoffs at), I think we both like it that way.

So Mike mowed parts of fields that he could not get with his big mower and one of those areas was my gourd and potato patch. Now I don't have to worry about stickerburs when watering or maintaining the vines. Yay.

Mike also cleaned out the gutters as well as the hottub this weekend, so I know he is sore, sore, sore. But... that's what we're HERE for, isn't it?

Groan......

I'm sore this morning. No, not mad at anyone or thing, but sore from a long weekend of labor. It was good labor to be sure as most labor is on the little farm. But when the labor is unaccustomed, well it hurts. This weekend saw a lot of things done. Curiously BOTH mornings we slept in until after 8am! We haven't done that for years and years. Once we got up we hit top gear quickly. First thing we went to what has become one of our favorite stores, Tractor Supply Company. There we took back 2 of the 3 bags of "beef cattle supplement" that we had errantly purchased the last time we were there. One drawback of our particular TSC is that they like to move things around frequently. The did this with the feed bags last week. Where the goat feed usually is, they had stacked bags of beef supplement. The bags and labels are identical except for the 8 point type on the label. The consistancy of this product reminded me of fish food flakes. It was 5 o'clock in the morning when I discovered the error, too late (early?) to do anything about it, so I fed it to the goats anyway. Our older female took a mouthful and the poor thing kept trying to swallow the dry powder. Not much of it got eaten. We still have the opened bag which will get traded to someone at Kristi's work that runs cattle. Anyway, we swapped the unopened bags at TSC for the goat chow that our babies love so much. 5 bags of goat feed and a bag of chicken scratch, a hose end sprayer for plant watering with built in on/off switch completed our purchase. We did a quicky shopping at the grocery store too since the store is a block away from the tractor store. We had 39 chickens left out of the birds we slaughtered and we have to eat our way through them. I had the crazy idea to make Carne Guisada but instead of beef, I substituted chicken. It came out pretty good and we're having it for lunch today (Monday).
Back at the farm, I borrowed Kristi's golf cart - boy, that thing comes in handy - and hauled the bags of feed to the tack room. When I opened the door I took in the sad state of the room after months of work. It needed cleaning up. So the hay was restacked, the empty feed bags were flattened and stacked, unused feeders and waterers were put away and everything was moved, swept under and replaced. Now it looks good for a few more weeks.
The next task for me was to rototill a 50ft x 50ft area for Kristi's goards. With our tiny little tiller this took a while. The dirt was very easy to work here. Very sandy and with very few rocks. This would be great for herbs. Once the tilling was done I raked the weed remnants out and smoothed it in preparation for planting. Then I began building the watering system. This was all made from 1" PVC with several valves for different circuits. I am taking the easy way out this time around and I'm running a hose from the nearest spigot to the PVC part of the system. I'll make it permanent later, digging a trench, altering the plumbing underground and putting in a run of pipe to the gourd field. For now it's quick and, believe me, dirty. Kristi got busy planting before I was finished. A few dozen gourd plants of 2 different kinds were planted. Since there was a lot of room left over, potatoes went in. That was it for yesterday. Today, who knows, peas, beans or more herbs may be planted. Barbecue has to go back into the vet today to have her stitches removed.

Ouch... ouch ouch

Weekends are tough, but Monday mornings, when I have to get up early and then go to work are the worst. Groan, creeeeaaaak, groan. Ouch.

This weekend, Mike cleaned out the tack room which needed it, fer sure. He also tilled another patch of land for my gourds (about the same size as the corn) and I planted them on Sunday, as well as two rows of potatoes. It was a gorgeous day and I have the sunburn to prove it.

The purple martins, fascinatingly fascinated with US, seem fairly ensconced in their way of life in their special purple martin condominiums. We have several hummingbirds, now, and we feel that the hawks that have been flying over are nesting on the creek side of the property.

The guineas are fine, totally afraid of us in the brooder box inside the chicken coop. The chickens don't know where to lay their eggs and found a new spot behind the door in the second stall. We have to go on hunts to find them, especially if their privacy has been 'invaded' and they have to find a new place. Of course, this assumes they can remember where they last laid. They are chickens, after all.

We are weaning Spot, the kid, and are down to feeding it 2 cups of special brew per day, now. It is already eating goat chow and after this batch of milk (2 gallons), we're done with all that nonsense! He will be the first to be sold. Sell your kids.. doesn't that sound like a dream?

I bought more seeds (fennel to keep the bugs off the gourds, and a few other things) and will be having 9 cabernet vines mailed to me soon. That will bring our grape crop up to 16, but the other vines are not wine grapes. One is a concord grape plant that seems to be doing great and the others are Thompson seedless. I mulched a lot of things this weekend, raking leaves from the backyard and using some of that for mulch of the fruit trees and the rest of the leaves I mixed into the compost.

I also cleaned out the non-producing pots in the greenhouse, moved some stuff around and made way for the new batch of stuff I just planted -- beans, cilantro. I still have a bunch of peppers that need to go in the ground.

The watermelon vines have taken off and are doing quite well now that I've gotten rid of the fire ants on the mound.

I asked Mike to check the chipper shredder and I'm glad he did. He found that the plastic gas holder on the outside of the machine was leaking at the midway seal. It will have to be replaced, but in the meantime, we can just fill it up half way so that it doesn't leak over the side.

The corn seems to be doing well and I have to keep fertilizing it (organic fertilizer) so that it stays green and healthy. The tomato plants are doing well, although they're experiencing leaf curl. I may have to fertilize them, as well.

Livestock count:
10 barred rock hens
7 assorted chickens (3 roosters, 4 hens)
1 peahen (looking for a peacock if you are out there and in the austin area)
7 guinea chicks (all hens --- at least that's what was promised)
8 goats (3 adults, 4 kids with moms and 1 kid with Mike as mom)
3 cats
1 dog
--
total count: 37.

April 29th -- Kristi writes: Well, Mike's gone and done it, given me a birthday present that few of you would ever even consider. Seven Guineas. No, not the monetary kind, the cute (until grown) kind that will wind up being our main source for grasshopper control (I hope). We picked them up last night and the little buggers won my heart -- squeaking their joy and picking at each others' feet. One of them picked up another guinea's foot as I watched... I think it must have looked like food. The squawking was noted by all except the one whose mouth was full of the other's foot.

Mike set up the brooder box, lid off, inside the chicken coop he built almost two years ago. This chicken coop is self-contained, stands on four posts and the 'ground floor' is about hip height. We painted the coop with the same colors used on our last house. In the barnyard, it IS the only thing that seems a little out of place for how nice it is. Mike put a heat lamp in the box, having first removed the pole on the side of the brooder box because it wouldn't fit into the coop. We found some cedar chips and a used feed bag and lined the box with them. I put the water container in, realizing that it was going to be filled with cedar chips and then I decided that it was necessary to elevate the container to avoid such things. I found a piece of flat concrete and stuck it underneath the waterer. All is well in Guinea world right now. We will probably move the chicken coop that contains said birds into the garden areas where the guineas can have an all-you-can eat bug buffet.

Our biggest cat, Eatz, was awfully curious about the little peeping sounds coming out of this coop and hung around, ears wide open and eyes highly attentive. Luckily, the coop closes safely and latches.

We prepped an area to start growing peppers, as we have over 130 tomato plants in progress in the fields and that's way too many. I need to plant more cilantro and put the peppers that are a few inches high, into the soil. It's time. We finally planted the watermelons in a mound -- although it looks funny and something out of Close Encounters of the Weird Kind.

A new, almost nightly ritual will be to un-hooter (for non-Texans, that means 'fix') our dog, Barbecue, by brushing all the stickerburs out of her coat. She's a magnet for them, with long white hair and a predisposition for rolling in the grass. We all should be so lucky.

The worm problem in the kitchen herb garden seems to be temporarily gone and this is a good thing, as I was about to wage a chemical war on the whole backyard. However, I used BT, a product that is a natural worm killer (doesn't bother earthworms). It's organic and works miracles. Mike sprayed the trees with this stuff two weekends ago and I think all the worms fell onto the herb garden from an oak that bends its branches toward the house.

We still have at least one goldfish left in the pond, but because of the algae and the lilypads, we can't really tell how many are in there. I'm hoping there's more than one and none of them have floated to the top, but we DO have cats and there are lots of birds hereabouts, so it would be surprising to see more than one. We started with eight tiny goldfish and the one we have been seeing seems to be about 3 inches long, so far. Who knows...

Life is good.


April 26th - Mike writes: The chickens are done. Finally. Last weekend was supposed to be dedicated to planting veggies but there were 6 chickens left to slaughter. They can't wait, SO..... We axed them and then set our sites on the roosters. The roosters are a problem. We have 5 roosters to go with 4 laying hens. The Barred Rock hens don't count here because they are not yet mature. For the number of hens we have 1 rooster is more than enough so we have too many. The traditional way to solve this problem is to make stock of the birds. Since we had our canner set up, the stock pots ready and the "processing" area set up we made our choice. Time for the roosters to go. The challange now is to catch them. Kristi got the net and some corn and we went hunting. Two we caught fairly easily. A big black roo with yellow fringe, pretty and useless. We had gotten used to how the Cornish hens reacted to being caught. A little flapping and little else. Well, the roo was different. Kristi put the footcuffs on him and I hung him gently from the 2x2 that is above the buckets that the blood drips onto. At this point the roo reminded us that he can still fly by flapping up to perch on the 2x2. Oops. This act hastened his end and as he hung there dripping we went in for another bird. After all we do these chickens by twos. We caught one of the annoying little Napoleons and he joined the other bird hanging. They got processesed and into the icebox with them. We set our sites on the remaining 3 males and went after them. Kristi caught one in the goat shed and I lost it trying to untangle it from the net. It ran off into the woods to live another day. After this fun we called an end to chasing roosters for the day. More stock was set to simmer

Taking Stock

Yesterday, I canned 21 quarts of chicken stock -- using parts and pieces of the birds we slaughtered on Wednesay (10) as well as the others from the weekend (24 birds). Chicken feet, necks and various parts... taking care not to put the chicken livers or the gizzards in, although both of these parts on the birds are huge. These parts tend to foul the fowl.

We also did the packing of the birds --using a foodsaver system that seems to work well in vacuum-packing the birds, even the huge ones that seemed too big. So now, we have 32 birds in the freezer (I gave away two to someone who has cancer and shouldn't be eating anything that's not grown properly) -- some of these birds are in parts and pieces. One day soon I'll again have a taste for chicken, but it 'is not this day!'

The corn is getting larger and we're going to have to find a way to keep the patch of dirt weeded until the stalks grow tall enough to block out the sunlight to the errant grasses and such that wants to grow faster than the plants themselves.

We have much to do, much to do. Most of the plants are too big for the greenhouse, now, so there is a chance a lot of the gourds, watermelons, peppers, (the rest of the) tomatos, flowers, etc... will not make it when transplanted. This is, however, year 1 and I look at everything as an experiment, a version One Point Oh, so to speak.

Too tired to type. As Frost said, "We have miles and miles to go before we sleep."

And so we do.

And so we do.

More chickens and corn and dogs and work and stuf

10 more chickens met their doom last night. We're getting more efficient at this. Sunday we "harvested" 24 of our Cornish Cross meat birds between 10:00 and 7:00. Wednesday we did in 10 chickens in a little over two hours after work. We started by going to the grocery store for ice and some groceries. We got some sandwiches as we didn't feel like we'd be wanting to cook after "taking care of" the chickens. We were right. While Kristi brought out the hot water and fastened the feed bags that we use for collecting feathers and offal, I collected a couple of chickens from the barn, tied on our fancy footnooses and hung the birds over a couple of buckets. I promptly set the birds to bleeding out. This takes a few minutes and I could help Kristi get the ice in the buckets and coolers, filling up clean water dunking buckets, getting my eviscerate tray and knives etc. We got to it in ernest just as the thunder started. Kristi kept saying "it isn't going to rain". I don't know if she really has a sense about these things or if she just makes it up but she was more or less right. It only rained a little and not enough to soak our clothing. So now we're in production. Kristi dunks the now dead bird in the hot water for half a minute and then we commence plucking. I help her pluck until the first bird is feather free, then I start "cleaning out" the chicken. Once the innards are gone the bird is cleaned up and put on ice. I also culled the defective bird that I should have done 2 months ago. Live and learn. This chicken had a bad spinal curvature and could only walk in counterclockwise circles. It would have been better off if I had killed it and not wasted the feed. So now we have 6 birds left to process, but not tonight. Tonight's fun will be a final rinse and then vacuum packing and freezing.
Also on tonight's agenda is taking Barbecue, the dog to the vets. She is going to be celebrating her 6 month birthday by getting spayed. No more stray males hanging around like the last 2 weeks. We'll water the plants that need it, walk around and look at our fruit trees and if there's time, I'll mow the backyard as the weeds are almost knee high.
In other news, the corn is up! Hundreds of little corn plants are up as high as and inch and a half already. We planted them a week ago with the help of Kristi's seeder. This is a gadget that has 2 wheels and a seed holder. It makes a small furrow in tilled soil, drops a seed every so many inches, covers the seed with dirt and marks the next row as a guide. Nice tool. If we'd had to do it with a hoe it would have taken hours. Once the plants have grown a little more and the rows are clearly defined I'll put down soaker hoses for more efficient watering.
This weekend will be a vegetable intensive one. We have more tomatoes, peppers, watermelons, potatoes, squash and beans to get in the ground. Many are too big in the greenhouse already. So it will be a tilling and crawling around on our knees kind of weekend. This is what we signed up for in living here and we can hardly wait. Weird huh?

the squawk about the slaughter

This past weekend has been a bit of a crazy one. Two poetry readings and then a chicken 'harvesting' (Mike says that's the PC way of saying 'slaughter'.) Also planted 34 more tomato plants.

But, then again, it's a typical weekend... working our asses off (isn't we supposed to be havin' a fiesta!) and making something of ourselves.

Then... there's the dog. The dog. No, not Barbecue, the other one. The one that's gone, now. The one that, when it saw my pellet gun aimed at its head, knew what it was and high-tailed it... a few times. But it always came back. Like I said, we were butchering chickens and Barbecue is in heat. These two seemingly disparate things are brought together by the fact that the stray dog not only had a piece of ass, but was looking to have some of that wonderful chicken flesh, as well.

Ah, the chicken slaughtering... errr, the butchering... errr, the HARVESTING process. What a thing this is. We went to Home Despot on Friday seeking a solution to the hanging of the chickens (upside down) so that they could bleed out. We bought these very expensive little doohickeys to do just that, but then Mike stayed up that night and figured out another way. And it was a better way. Slip knots on twine. Cheap, better, best, really.

But I'm the knot-maker, having come from a fishing background where, if it wasn't tied, tied up or tied down, it was gone in the wind or the water. I also had a fascination for crocheting as a kid, a hobby I was glad to give up for poetry or something else less useful. Nonetheless, the skill of tying knots has remained and so I did this. It was a trade-off. I did the knots, Mike did the evisceration of the chickens. I also plucked most of them and packed them in coolers and such.

On Saturday morning, I swear, I think we were both stalling and then we had to purchase ice (never do this from a convenience store) for which we paid a fortune. The second load of ice that Mike had to go get was a lot cheaper from the local grocery chain. We set everything up and started around 9:30. We did in 24 chickens from then until 4:30 in the afternoon, taking just a few breaks and getting rained on from time to time. Luckily, it was light rain and didn't last for very long. The goats hung around all morning and most of the afternoon, very curious about what we were doing. At one point, the main rooster strutted up to the table and squawked, seeing that two chickens were hanging upside down. He quickly returned to the barnyard and we didn't see him for another hour.

As the chickens hung upside-down, Mike slit their throats and let them bleed out into buckets - usually about a few tablespoons per bird. And these are LARGE birds. We fed them well.

The chickens, once upside-down, flapped around a while and I waited until they died then put them, one at a time, into the very hot water. We kept the burners on in the kitchen the whole day so that we would have a constant supply of hot water. Without the hot water, the feathers are extremely difficult to remove.

We did in two at a time, thinking that we would be able to handle five or six, but two was plenty. Mike would grab them out of the chicken area, bring them into the side yard where a ladder, a long table, buckets of ice and coolers were. I put the slipknots over their legs and tightened them, then he hung them over the buckets on a board attached to the ladder. It's funny, but after a while, the chickens stopped running to him when he would enter the coop area. Usually, he is the one who feeds them and they are HAPPY that he is there, but when he started removing them two at a time, I think they got suspicious. At least, as suspicious as they could get having little tiny chicken brains.

After we plucked them, Mike took the bile duct and anus out, then the lungs and the other parts of the chicken. He cut the head off and then when he was done, threw the main carcass into a bucket of ice, put the head and chicken feet into the same bucket and the liver and gizzards into a pot with ice.

After this was all done, we cleaned up and I used the feathers for my compost as well as the heavy blood in the buckets. Mike cleaned all the buckets up and I put things away.

We have a friend who is a little squeamish about the killing part, but I have to say that when Mike would slit their throats, he would say that he is sorry. Is that better?

My compost is happy and will be MUCH happier when we are done with the rest of the chickens (16 left to 'harvest') -- this means I get to have all the good poop from their area for my compost. The temperature of the pile was such that it was beginning to burn the stuff at the bottom. This is when you know the heat is there and the compost is working.

However, during the day, the whole 'harvesting' process left us not so hungry for lunch (each of us ate a half sandwich). It wasn't so bad after the first few chickens, but we ate dinner out that night. Mike had chicken flautas, but I couldn't stand the thought of it and had enchiladas. They had no chicken in them. It may be a while... at least for me. But the cornish crosses, after all that, look exactly like the chickens you get at the grocery store. And I know these don't have 'water added' and they are disease free. It won't take long before I get used to the idea of eating them again.

Such a graceful Saturday with planting tomatoes and so civilized at a poetry reading and then... SAVAGE SLAUGHTER of HELPLESS BEASTS! Really.. this is our life. The graceful and the grateful, the seedless and the seediness, the growth of new things and the death of others. Sometimes I wonder if it gets any better than this.

From the other one...

I don't often get a chance to write or to voice my side of what we're doing out here on our Texas Farm, so it's time.

It's been a long weekend and I'm feeling it -- sunburned, sore muscled and tired beyond reason. But it's been a good weekend. I tilled the corn patch so that I would know how much room we'd have for other things... Mike thinks it's too big and I think it's too small. We are planning on using the corn to feed us as well as the all the livestock.

I also planted the asparagus, although it may be too late -- not seasonally too late, but the asparagus seems to be dead.. maybe it's dormant, but we bought it from Home Despot and believe me, they don't have the finest quality items. However, the guy from Bonnie Farms showed up at our little Bastrop Home Despot this past weekend and I found out that they have 17 greenhouses in Beeville and the rest of them are mostly in Alabama. The accent the guy was carrying kind of gave away the fact that he was from AL, too. At least the plants in our little Home Despot were grown in Texas. This makes me feel a little better.

Our compost isn't big enough for all the things we want to do with it and it's just now heating up properly. Massive amounts of coffee grounds as well as some organic fertilizer will hopefully restart the decomposition process.

The worms, formerly in our guest bathroom, are now in the compost area, but still in the plastic box I used to grow them. They're red worms. Good for loosening the dirt around plants and making wonderful, wonderful vermicultured compost. Black dirt.. texas tea... oh, don't get me started.

Today I will probably finish tilling in the composted leaves from our acreage that's forested. The tilling will be done in the corn area and maybe I can plant, now.

I still have a greenhouse full of plants but have not had time to put them into the soil. The soil temperature is about right at the moment and there won't really be any better time to do this.

I planted a bunch of dill in an area between the back yard and the shed -- as well as some catnip for which, I think, my cats will be truly grateful. I snipped some off and watched them all roll around happily drunk in the dirt. Silly cats.

The dog.. oh, the dog. Grrrr... If only she could not be so... dogged! She's really sweet, though.

And now the chickens are too big, so we might be doing some chicken killin' this evening. It depends on how each of our days have been and whether we're up to the chore tonight. Otherwise, the corn's goin' in. That's all there is to it.

Mike is NOT my slave... he does what he wants to do and that's all there is to THAT!
Now... where's my whip?

Signed --

The OTHER farmer at this location.